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We Came, We Saw, We Hacked

Last Thursday, we kicked off our first 24-hour hackathon of the year. Close to 30 different projects were pitched and by the end there were some awesome things to show.

Hackathons are a long-standing AddThis tradition where people from all parts of the company come together to work on projects of their choosing. Past creations have ranged from transforming our office space to product tweaks and improving our secret sauce.

Here’s a look at what happened this time at the AddThis HQ in Virginia!

AddThis CTO Matt Abrams kicked things off Thursday morning with a run-down on what it takes to survive an AddThis hackathon. Hint: rule #8 involves lots of caffeine. Of course other tips include challenging yourself, learning something new, and having fun.

After kickoff, everyone got right to work. We even had offsite colleagues call in to join us!

Not all hackathon projects involve coding. Here’s the succulent garden team putting together a planter for the office. (We’re drought-prone, so we thought something with minimal watering requirements would be best.)

Ta-da! The office is now a little greener.

Gardens aside, there were lots of other projects happening throughout the day. Some of these included ways to better harness and organize our data, better bot detection, how employees can more easily reach out and say hello to new hires, adding part of our company ethos to our chalkboard wall in the cafe, and more.

Hello, Jim and Mike!

And what’s a hackathon without a little 2:30am ping pong?

After what was an all-nighter for some, we gathered again the next morning for presentations. There’s never a dull moment at AddThis – and hackathon presentations are no exception. Ben led the way with his own AddThis-inspired rap. Props to Ben!

Want to join us for the next one? We’re hiring! Visit our careers page to check out open positions.